Too Heavy to Hug

It’s only just gone winter but talk of music festivals early next year has really heated up. Much to the dismay of countless emos, teeny-boppers and try-hard hipsters, Big Day Out 2015 has been cancelled. But on the flipside, Soundwave 2015 will be run over two days. That’s right; that could mean either double the number of bands or double the allotted time for each slot. Since there are no real details yet we can just speculate.

Welcome to THTH, Forte’s premier source of all things heavy, hard, fast and metal. To somewhat little fanfare, the seemingly understated and conservative UK Metal Hammer Golden God Awards ceremony for 2014 was held the other day. I’m not entirely sure if the statue winners were decided by a public vote but looking at the winners list, and considering the mag would encourage reader participation, the winners aren’t much different to recent publicly-voted award winners.

Here’s something out of the all-ordinaries. A recent report by City Lab has suggested that countries with higher wealth also have more metal bands per 100,000 residents. Basically, the stronger the country’s economy, the more metal bands reside within that country. Unsurprisingly, Scandinavia has the highest concentration of metal bands per 100,000 residents and also boasts a high level of “relative wealth, robust social safety nets and incredibly high quality of life”. Australia, North America and the rest of Anglo-Europe all have roughly the same amount of metal bands per 100,000 and share similar economies.

In metal news recently, a fan of Five Finger Death Punch, Mark Douglas, who is also a father, had taken his nine-year-old daughter, Olivia, to the show. At the show Olivia was invited on stage to join in singing the chorus on FFDP’s ‘Burn MF’ (the chorus goes “burn motherf*cker, burn” apparently) while her father stood aside to film his daughter’s vocal debut. During the song FFDP’s vocalist can be seen performing the song while holding the microphone next to Olivia’s ear.

If you watched at home then you’d have witnessed the shambles where there were long awkward silences, the long cut to the feed, the terrible sound, the lengthy technical issues before Guns N’ Roses’ hour-long set, and when Joan Jett and Taylor Momsen were asked to perform their rendition of ‘I Hate Myself for Loving You’ for a second time straight after they finished.

It appears a conclusion has been reached in metal’s most mundane, bitter, childish legal spats no one really gives a shit about: the one that owns the Queensrÿche moniker. THTH has been following this saga for the years it has spanned. We here at THTH are super tired, so for one last time let’s recap: Geoff Tate, original vocalist for the band, was fired in 2012 after 30 years of fronting the prog group.

Keeping with the theme of modern music industry case studies and less with metal, for this edition anyway, news is that the Wu-Tang Clan is set to release their new album, The Wu – Once Upon a Time in Shaolin soon. What’s so fascinating about this album release is that Wu-Tang are only going to make a solitary copy of the album.

Twelve Foot Ninja (TFN) has been somewhat of a case study for THTH of late. There was that time they crowdsourced a bunch of money for a video clip; then there was that time they released that video clip – both instances put under the microscope, loosely, as the new technological fashion to gain fans, respect and ultimately tours or cold hard cash.

In case you didn’t hear, Joey Jordison has left Slipknot. Shortly after the departure a statement was released suggesting he decided to leave. Then I saw a lead for an article stating Joey didn’t decide to leave. Intriguing… So, in a world first Forte exclusive, THTH will continue to dissect the goings-on behind the scenes in the Slipknot camp in the only way we know how: speculation. This is THTH’s Holiday Joey Departs Slipknot Fanfic. [Part VI – The Final Chapter]

In case you didn’t hear, Joey Jordison has left Slipknot. Shortly after the departure a statement was released suggesting he decided to leave. Then I saw a lead for an article stating Joey didn’t decide to leave. Intriguing… So, in a world first Forte exclusive, THTH will continue to dissect the goings-on behind the scenes in the Slipknot camp in the only way we know how: speculation. This is THTH’s Holiday Joey Departs Slipknot Fanfic. [Part V]